Healthy Choices

For decades women have accepted their doctors' advice and taken hormone replacement therapy to alleviate menopausal symptoms by getting estrogen back into their bodies. Now women are being told that the therapy that was supposed to restore their quality of life could kill them.

Recent studies in the U.S. and overseas show that women taking HRT had a significant increase in breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots. Those reports are scary, but the symptoms of menopause (including sexual problems, bone loss, and sometimes debilitating hot flashes) that drove women to HRT in the first place are as real as ever.

The fear and confusion surrounding HRT make all the more timely new books that offer alternatives to estrogen. These books deal not only with the physical issues associated with midlife, but with the emotional and spiritual challenges that come with getting older.

No one could argue that exercise isn't good for women. But some authors go further, prescribing it as the key to menopausal relief. Exercise keeps the body limber, the joints loose, and the serotonin pumping, the reasoning goes. Among the advocates of coping through exercise is Suza Francina, author of Yoga and the Wisdom of Menopause: a Guide to Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Health at Midlife and Beyond (Health Communications, 0-7573-0065-0), who defines yoga as a holistic solution that combines physical and spiritual relief. A beginner-friendly guide, the book includes black-and-white photos of positions and explains how yoga supports women during menopause.

No one is surprised any longer by hearing yoga touted as therapeutic. But tennis? Alice Wilson-Fried, who describes herself as five-foot-eleven, "not skinny," middle-aged, and Black, tells how she found relief on the court in Menopause, Sisterhood, and Tennis: A Miraculous Journey Through the Change (Basic Health Publications, 1-59120-076-8.) Her first-person, laugh-out-loud funny story explores the value of exercise, diet, mental activity, and friendship gained through tennis. She even includes a chapter about how the older, not-skinny tennis player should dress for the game.

Comfort Foods~And Herbs
Other authors focus less on how women move their bodies than what they put into them. Politically Incorrect Nutrition: What You May Not Know About Your Food and Drink (Vital Health Publishing, 1-890612-34-0), by diet counselor Michael Barbee, attacks the foods that Americans consider healthy and warns against substances such as fluoride, aspartame, and bovine growth hormone. "What we have lost sight of is how our biochemical individuality expresses itself and how the food we eat affects us," he writes. "We have simply lost touch with ourselves." He devotes a chapter to osteoporosis, urging women to "get exercise and sunlight; eat unrefined, nutrient-dense foods; do your best to reduce stress; and be conscious of your pH balance. Don't be fooled by the pharmaceutical companies."

Diane Schwarzbein, M.D., author of The Schwarzbein Principle II, The Transition: A Regeneration Process To Prevent and Reverse Accelerated Aging (Health Communications, 1-55874-964-0) is also concerned that we are oblivious to what we put into our bodies. She outlines four metabolism types and recommends a five-step program for each. The trick is to balance hormones. "Since all of the hormone systems of the body are interconnected, if one hormone system is out of balance, they are all out of balance," she writes. "Nutrition and lifestyle habits that balance one hormone will help balance out all hormones."

Suzannah Olivier is an English nutritionist who in her latest book, Natural Hormone Balance (Woodland Publishing, 1-58054-363-4), maintains, "the foundation of health is the food you eat if you eat in a way which conflicts with your body's needs, eventually it will rebel and symptoms will make themselves apparent. Hormone imbalance is one such symptom." Olivier recommends foods and herbs to help women maintain a healthy balance.

Marilyn Glenville, PhD., a registered nutritionist and psychologist, is another proponent of the diet-and-herb solution. Her book, HRT-Free Menopause Breakthrough: The New Natural Alternatives (Ulysses Press, 1-56975-357-1), defines menopausal symptoms and shows how foods and herbs can help.

Help For Women On The Edge of Menopause
Perimenopause is the time leading up to menopause, usually between the ages of thirty-five and fifty, when many women experience major changes in mood, body weight, sex drive, and energy levels. In a way, it can be more of a challenge than actual menopause because it often goes unrecognized. Women immersed in caring for children or parents, and meeting the demands of a career, often blame loss of energy or sex drive, moodiness, and weight gain, on the stress of multi-tasking. They simply do not realize that there are hormonal changes taking place in their bodies.

The Hormone Survival Guide for Perimenopause: Balance Your Hormones Naturally (Larkfield Publishing, 0-9742067-0-9) by Nisha Jackson, Ph.D., a nurse practitioner certified in gynecology and obstetrics, recommends hormone testing to determine an individual's needs. Jackson prescribes natural hormones that are made primarily from soybeans and wild yams to create hormones identical to those made by the human body.
Another book aimed at this age group is The Midlife Bible: A Woman's Survival Guide by Michael P. Goodman, M.D. (Robert D. Reed Publishers, 1-931741-32-8). Goodman, who has spent thirty-three years as an obstetrician, gynecologist, and perimenopausal expert, mixes fact and humor, sprinkling cartoons throughout his text. He prescribes a comprehensive approach instead of "take a test, give a pill," and says that women know their bodies and will make wise choices if given the right information.

Embracing Your Inner Crone
Of course, middle-aged women are concerned with more than estrogen and hot flashes. They arrive at a point where they can look inward and take time to analyze their thoughts and feelings. Emotional well-being and health become as important as physical health. Tian Dayton's The Magic of Forgiveness: Emotional Freedom and Transformation at Midlife (Health Communications, 0-7573-0086-3), offers a toolkit of methods like journaling, affirmations, and letter-writing to deal with anger and sadness. He includes narratives that describe the emotional baggage acquired over a lifetime and suggests ways to release that baggage.

A book that midlife readers might want to pass on to their mothers and daughters is Sex Matters for Women: A Complete Guide to Taking Care of Your Sexual Self, written by Sallie Foley, Sally A. Kope, and Dennis P. Sugrue (Guilford Press, 1-57230-641-6). This comprehensive guide to the female body explores subjects such as how the body works, what hormones do, body image, relationships, sexual orientation, and sexual diseases. The authors are sex therapists who set out to answer questions that women may be too embarrassed to ask.

Ultimately, no amount of yoga or herb supplements can match the power of the right attitude. Post-menopausal women turn into crones, says Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen. She means it as a compliment. In her book, Crones Don't Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women (Conari Press, 1-57324-912-2), she defines a crone as a "woman who has wisdom, compassion, humor, courage, and vitality she can see the flaws and imperfections in herself and others she has learned to trust herself to know what she knows." This short book outlines thirteen qualities that one must master to become a crone. Crones don't whine, she says; they accept and move on. Written with wisdom and humor, this is one of those books to share with favorite crones and crones-to-be.

It's doubtful that any single book has the one infallible plan for dealing with menopause. But, taken together, these publications present a hopeful picture for midlife women, who possess more power than they might have thought to control their own health.